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Hop Yeast

A yeast dough flavored with hops, potatoes, ginger, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Potato and ginger work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 992 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hop Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop water

  1. Boil the water, hops, and potatoes together until the potatoes are done.

  2. Remove the potatoes and mash them into the water.

Make the dough

  1. Add the flour, salt, sugar, and ginger to the mixture and scald together with the hop water.

  2. Let the mixture cool until almost cold, then add the baker's yeast.

  3. Allow it to stand in a warm place until it becomes light.

Store

  1. Store it in the cellar, closely covered. It will keep for two to three weeks.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Potato + gingertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together992 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Baker's yeast
Ferments the mixture, producing gas that makes it rise and become light.
Flour
Adds starch and structure, thickening the mixture as it is scalded.
Potatoes
Add starch and body, helping hold moisture in the mixture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast. The mixture must cool until almost cold before the yeast goes in. Yeast cells are killed by excessive heat, so adding it while the mixture is still hot can stop the rise.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (hops, flour, sugar, ginger):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, flour, sugar, ginger. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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